THE BOOK FAIR

In the powerful and haunting tale of anti-Semitism in a small Swiss town, Chessex links the events of 1942 to the present day, and to the ancient past. The novella describes the horrific murder of a kind and wealthy Jew by brutal Nazi thugs, who dream of Hitler’s complete and total victory.

Symbolically, townsfolk dismiss the murder until impossible to ignore, and at the war’s end, after the terrible destruction of Jews known to all, anti-Semitism yet thrived in the pastor, Philippe Lugrin, the instigator of the crime.  Decades later, Chessex recalled a chance encounter with Lugrin and noted he felt soiled just from Lugrin’s evil presence.

Winner of the Prix Goncourt Award for L’Ogre, published in 1973 and Prix Jean Girono Award in 2007 for his life’s work, the author, born and raised in Payerne, Switzerland, was eight years old at the time of the crime, the murder of the sixty-year old cattle dealer, Arthur Bloch.